Passages

[domino harvey]

Liam Payne, 31, of One Direction, of a fall from a hotel balcony

[TechnicolorAcid]

Well you can only fall down.

[Captain Paranoia]

Lillian Schwartz, who made some great computer animated films in the early 1970s.

Considering that many of the short films she did were revolutionary for its time, I'm surprised she isn't brought up often in discussions about early computer animation in film.

[Red Screamer]

I discovered some of her films just earlier this year thanks to swo and Light Cone. Such enjoyable, lively work.

[Saturnome]

My experience with early computer animation history is that it tend to focus on technical innovation more than how enjoyable, interesting or thoughtful the films themselves are. I studied computer animation at university and the history course was "and here's the first use of global illumination" (it's Shrek 2). We saw some John Whitney, Peter Foldes' Hunger, but it quickly went to early Pixar shorts, no Lillian Schwartz.

[JSC]

Two in one day, both in their nineties.

Film and television director Alvin Rakoff at 97.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/o ... es-aged-97

Actress and dancer, Mitzi Gaynor at 93
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/o ... cific-dies

[colinr0380]

Film and television director Alvin Rakoff at 97.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/o ... es-aged-97

Director of Hoffman with Peter Sellers, and the strange 1980 'George Kennedy as crazed ship's captain' horror film Death Ship!

His last director's credit was on two episodes of the four part Channel 4 adaptation of A Dance To The Music of Time from 1997.

[JSC]

and the strange 1980 'George Kennedy as crazed ship's captain' horror film Death Ship!

...which also generated one of Leonard Maltin's most succinct reviews.

Luxury liner collides with "death ship." Survivors board "death ship." "Death ship" tries to
murder survivors. Forget it.

[Fred Holywell]

Mitzi Gaynor 1931 - 2024 | TCM Remembers

[Matt]

I urge those of you who like movie musicals to track down Mitzi Gaynor’s TV specials. They are classics of the singing/dancing celebrity specials that used to be a TV staple. They used to be on Amazon Prime but are no longer available there, but they are around if you look for them online.

Here’s a (low-quality) clip of one of my favorite numbers. She’s wearing a great example of Bob Mackie’s “nude illusion” gowns—first popularized by the “Happy Birthday Mr. President” gown made for Marilyn Monroe by Jean-Louis but based on a conception by Mackie.

https://youtu.be/Bs-1HZrvg8s

[domino harvey]

Funnily enough, the first film that came to mind was My Blue Heaven, with Gaynor lampooning South Pacific on TV within the movie before she starred in the film adaptation

[Feego]

A few recent passings that have gone unmentioned in this thread:

Cissy Houston, famed soul singer and mother of Whitney Houston

Christopher Ciccone, choreographer and brother of Madonna

Nicholas Pryor, actor known for Smile, Risky Business, and for never vomiting at home

[beamish14]

Philip Zimbardo, famous to everyone who has ever taken a Psychology 101 course as the architect of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Portrayed by Billy Crudup in a feature film about it.

[therewillbeblus]

Portrayed by Billy Crudup in a feature film about it.

And then replicated by Dan Castellaneta in Veronica Mars

[domino harvey]

My college intro Psych class used his textbook and this being the era of nascent digital media integration, there were all sorts of videos hosted by him one could / have to watch as part of the coursework. And let me tell you, this guy was an Upright Citizens Brigade character

[colinr0380]

Philip Zimbardo, famous to everyone who has ever taken a Psychology 101 course as the architect of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Portrayed by Billy Crudup in a feature film about it.

There was a big surge of interest in the Stanford Prison Experiment in the early 2000s, mostly stemming from the 2001 German film Das Experiment which was the debut theatrical feature from Oliver Hirschbiegel, who would follow it up with his 'source of the meme of angry Hitler having a rant in his bunker' film Downfall (Hirschbiegel being part of that turn of the Millennium renaissance in German filmmakers along with Tom Tykwer and The Lives of Others director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), which received a 2010 US remake starring Adrien Brody and Forest Whitaker, directed by the guy who created the Prison Break series and with one of the producers being the son of Muammar Gaddafi(!)

And in 2002 the BBC did a four part series recreating the experiment, which I would hazard a guess mostly came about because the BBC was attempting to jump on the bandwagon of the Big Brother phenomenon (which began on Channel 4 in 2000) with their own 'trapped in confinement' reality TV series, just one with pretentions to more than just entertainment. That series did not entirely work (they didn't factor in the idea of the participants being hyper-aware of and playing to the camera recording them, for one thing, unlike the Big Brother show which was all about that aspect to a narcissistic extent) but it is worth remembering as a key entry in the development of the reality TV format, before any notions of these shows attempting to seriously study anything dropped away completely.

Then as beamish14 mentions, there was an official biographical film of the experiment in 2015 with Billy Crudup playing Zimbardo.

[ellipsis7]

Christine Boisson

[Never Cursed]

Cinematographer Dick Pope, best known for his work with Mike Leigh

[willoneill]

Cinematographer Dick Pope, best known for his work with Mike Leigh

Hopefully the Oscars don't repeat this mistake during the In Memoriam segment.

[The Narrator Returns]

Christine Boisson

I love her in The Truth About Charlie, one of the things that really help to set it apart from Charade even if only for me.

[beamish14]

Cinematographer Dick Pope, best known for his work with Mike Leigh

The Reflecting Skin is so gorgeous

[knives]

He also did some great work for Richard Linklater.

[Mr. Deltoid]

Cinematographer Dick Pope, best known for his work with Mike Leigh

That's sad. Naked's apocalyptic vision wouldn't be nearly as effective without Pope's lensing, which locates London's Dickensian underbelly within a late 20th century context.
Interestingly, he also shot iconic videos for Soft Cell, The Specials (Ghost Town) and Queen (the poignant, final These Are The Days of Our Lives).

[beamish14]

Lynda Obst, producer on The Fisher King, Interstellar, and Contact

[hearthesilence]

Fernando Valenzuela. Naturally, lots of coverage from the L.A. Times if you have access.